Image by Sterling Sanders
Ideal weight and weight ideals are issues I have been surrounded with my whole life. I grew up as a professional ballet dancer in a very competitive environment, and I learnt SO many lessons in the process, sometimes the hard way. This post is not about my journey with weight loss or gain (I’ll share someday!). Losing and managing weight is not as simple as calories in < calories burned. These are the 5 observations I have seen regarding weight management. Both with my ballet world experience and having a fitness business for the past 9 years where thousands of women have trained, I see a common thread in the challenges we face when it comes to weight. I get it, we want to feel good, look good, be healthy but it can be so challenging to drop pounds when you’re stuck in a vicious cycle. Here are some of the lessons that I hope will be beneficial;
You have to manage your MANY feelings!!!
This one is the most important one. I often hear the debate, especially around the new year, about which is more important; diet or exercise? Diet! The consensus always seems to say. If you are eating badly, no exercise in the world will save you! Well….true….but they are missing the freakin’ point. You don’t exercise so that your FitBit can tell you you burned X amount of calories. That actually doesn’t matter, you’ll make those calories up as soon as you drink a glass of milk. As you may know, when you exercise, you go into an “after-burn” period where your body’s little calorie burning furnace is kicked into overdrive and more efficiently burning energy, which that translates into weight loss. That’s great, but also not the point. The point is that exercise helps you manage your feelings, and boy do we have them! Think of your typical day… one of these is bound to happen; work projects were stalled, you’re annoyed at your significant other or you are sick of dating, your kids are pushing all your buttons or you go on social media and see something upsetting, your hormones… the list goes on. All these things happen all the time, and if you’re like most people, you know what is going to help you feel better?! Overtly sweet, salty or fatty food that releases serotonin! Oh yes, it will. Then you’ll feel awful, guilty, groggy and tired so you’ll need more to feel better. What helps you manage those spikes of stress throughout the day is regular exercise. What is regular? Like, more days than not. I try to not let 3 days in a row pass where I don’t exercise. 2 days is my max. When you are working out on a regular basis, especially a workout you love, your brain will get all the chemicals (serotonin, endorphins, the good stuff!) it needs to be happier and stable. Have you ever gone to a class or on a run and after you’re done, the problems you thought you had don’t seem like a big deal anymore? After that workout you also feel less inclined to eat your feelings, that’s because when you exercise your brain is equipped to handle anxiety. I’m not a Dr. , but I have seen the effects of exercise on thousands of women that have come to MaZi Dance Fitness and feel them myself, time and time again! This is a good article if you want to dig deeper.
You’re gonna eat and you’re gonna like it
This is the other piece of the puzzle of course; eating. Not eating, and not liking what you eat are not sustainable. I’m always amazed at how little some people I have trained eat, and they don’t have good results. That’s because your body in it’s infinite wisdom, will find ways to survive your tricks of not eating. Sometimes, you may think you’re not eating that much, and you’re not for some of the day, but then sneak in cereal bowls after dinner or that classic 3 PM snack that you forget all about. The other thing that happens, as you know, is your metabolism will slow down and this one is a tough one to fix. Enjoying your meals, loving what you are eating and making eating positive is really effective to your relationship with food. When you lose the guilt about enjoying your meals you digest food differently, your brain (it’s always about the brain) doesn’t sabotage you the same way it would if you are counting calories, feeling like a starving martyr or feel guilty about what you just had. Another big mistake that I see are people eating what they don’t like to eat, because the “diet says so”. Again, this is not sustainable. The key to any good diet is sustainability. You don’t want to think of “going on a diet”, you want to think of your eating plan as how you’re going to eat from now on, forever. My husband LOVES cooking and meal times. Most of our conversations revolve around “what’s happening for dinner?”. When I first met him, I was super annoyed because he was kinda like “you’re gonna eat it, and you’re gonna like it”! GRRR, I just wanted to eat egg whites and cereal for dinner or a Lean Cuisine….come ooon, all that food?! Then, over time, I realized that sitting down to a proper meal was actually making me lose weight! Not only was my body getting the nutrients it needed, but a I felt so satiated I didn’t need to go on snacking until midnight. Make time to eat. Eat what you love and with people you love.
Embrace Fat, Fiber, Protein
These are the magic trio. All your snacks and meals should have at lease 2, preferably all 3 of these! Fat- makes you feel full, helps you digest, and regulate blood sugar levels. Adding enough fat to my diet changed my life! I have never been as lean as I am having added healthy fats. It not only makes food taste better, it signals to your brain that you can STOP eating now. Fiber- Slows down digestion to have you feel full longer, lowers cholesterol and regulates blood sugar levels as well. If you’re “new to fiber”, start slowly and gradually increase your intake so that you don’t have surprises! 🙂 Protein- adds a metabolic boost, helps you feel full longer and helps you keep your muscle mass! I’ve always been a fan of protein, but don’t overdo it. Invest in a registered dietitian to help you determine your optimal levels! Everyone is different and what works for some may not work for you.
Develop habits, not will power!
Preparation is key when it comes to successful changes. If you’re trying to lose weight, plan your meals and don’t leave things up to chance. When you’re first trying to implement changes in a diet, if you are hoping that you can wing it and trust your will power to make the right choice, you’ll soon find you were wrong. Will power is not dependable because you’re relying on feelings and moods, which we determined are not stable. So plan what you’re gonna eat, plan your workout schedule and plan for things to not go as planned. Develop contingency plans. If something falls through and you can’t get to class, what are you going to do? Know the Plan B’s. Don’t make it an emotional choice, it’s on your schedule, so go to your appointment with yourself. Likewise with meals, if you couldn’t have what you planned to have for lunch, do you have go to mini-meals that will carry you through the work day that you can buy anywhere? There are so many great options available right now but real food is always best; apples, cheese sticks, turkey, almonds, avocado, bananas, eggs, hummus! After about 3 months of meticulous habit building, you’ll feel secure in what you’ve built and be able to have more flexibility but having that time to shape behavior and develop your confidence is key.
Post-baby weight
Oh my mamas, I had to add a special section for us because it’s tough. When you’re pregnant you forgo all control of your body, it becomes a vehicle, a means to an end. When you go to the doctor, you are the patient kind of, but not really, the baby you’re carrying is the patient. You get poked, prodded, what you want and feel like doesn’t matter, the baby is what matters and you get that message come across a few times. Then the baby is born and you are no longer solely responsible for them because you have successfully grown them! You are now your own person again, you have your body back, but wait! Are you breastfeeding? Then, still no. Yes, you can take cold medication and have wine and sushi but still your body, the machine, knows that it has to produce. Not figuratively, it actually does have to produce….milk! It’s impossible to implement perfect eating strategies when you’re nursing because again, your body is the vehicle. It needs to retain some fat so that it can nourish your baby and sustain YOU. Remember you? Every couple of months I hear from a mother at MaZi Dance Fitness that is frustrated with the speed of post-baby weight loss, and every time, I ask “are you still nursing?” If so, those 10, 15, 20 pounds are going to be stubborn and that’s ok! You’re still growing that baby! It is so fascinatingly complex, of course your body needs fat to make milk but also hormone-wise, your body is getting served a wicked cocktail of emotions all through nursing. After nursing my last child, I happened to go to my ob/gyn a week after we had stopped. I told her that I felt very anxious all the time and that I felt that all news affected me deeply and wanted to know if that was normal. She suggested that I give myself 2 months to assess and let my hormones settle in after nursing and that she could almost guarantee that I would feel “normal” again. Well, it was true. Not 100%, I will never be back to “normal” again because I’m a mother and have those mommy worries but I really did feel more stable, about 80% better. This anxiety and hormonal fluctuation, along with having to retain fat for milk production are not going to help in weight loss matters. At the end of the day, weight loss is a hormonal experiment, so keep that in mind when you’re a stressed out mom, nursing or chasing multiple kids. So after you stop nursing, and some time has gone by and you develop a routine, try implementing the first 4 things on this list and see how it goes. Just remember, that having kids makes you realize how fast time flies because you have a visual of time passing every day. Along with that comes a sense of realizing how much you can’t waste that time on worrying about your weight. You are beautiful.
Do you have any tips you’d like to share of what’s worked for you in managing your weight? With so much love, Z
Red Dress Betsey & Adam
